Everyone will have to pay money every time they turn a page." [Archive]

Target

05-20-2000, 12:21 AM

Hey Gene....I just had a thought. Perhaps we have been looking at this in the wrong light all along. What if we view this as the catalyst that has been needed to wake-up the majority of consumers/users to the open source ideal?

I mean, eventually, perhaps the user community will become so sick of the rules, regulations, constraints, and expense placed upon them by companies who are trying to add to their already enormous profit coffers, that they will simply refuse to purchase or use those products!

Those companies that try too much to control their product after it has been sold, will simply find themselves with ever decreasing popularity and market share.

In the short term, it likely will be a bigger burden on the user community than it will be a benefit........but if we visualize this situation in the future, say 10 years, perhaps we will look back on it and laugh at how stupid, greedy, and petty some companies and idividuals were, and how they figuratively slashed their own wrists!!

For example, there has been a lot of discussion about the Metallica vs Napster deal for a while. Even Joel recently commented on the price of CD's and what he got for his $90. Now, I think we all know that if the average person can go and buy a blank CD for less than a buck, then record companies are buying them by the millions for much less than that. So, where does the other $14.99 per CD go?? Obviously its tied up in marketing, distribution, and middle-man profits, with the artist likely to receive the smallest piece of the sales pie.

Now, if Metallica had say embraced the digital age instead as many artists have, and offered their albums/CD's for download directly to anyone willing to pony up a $1-$2..... how much pirating would be thwarted and how much more direct income would they receive from selling their music? I don't know the answer, but it certainly begs to be argued. Personally, I haven't downloaded or purchased any Metallica music. But if I liked their music and thought about doing so, I would be much more inclined to readily pay the $1-2 charge for a legal downloaded copy, rather than buy or pirate a $15 copy somebody else bought.

And lets not let companies off the hook either. Its easy to pick on Microsoft, so I will for this example. Lets face it, relatively few people would pirate Windows 98 if it was $9 instead of $99!! The only reason open source operating systems and applications haven't already over-taken companies like MS is because they are not nearly as muture a product! In most regards, they're better products, but the incompatibility and ease of use issues haven't been completely worked out. Companies like MS that continue down the path of copy/use restrictions in the end will only harm themselves as they push their very own user base to alternatives. Personally, I hated forking over the $100 for a copy of win98, but at the time it was the best game going for my needs. I have Mandrake, BeOS, and Redhat too, but I think we can all agree that as much as we hate MS sometimes, it was the best game in town for ease of use and breadth of compatibility. 10 years from now, after other OS's like BeOS, and the various flavors of Linux have matured, people will literally flock away from companies like Microsoft unless they drastically change their tune.

I don't disagree with your ascertation that this is pure bullsh!t though in the "here and now"......I just think that in like all revolutions, us peasants simply need something to make us so sick of it that we take action. Perhaps this latest wave of nonsense will be that staw that breaks our camels back http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif